Mommy = Cruel

Here are some recent pictures I took of Bella after I took her pony tail down for the day. That baby hair gel I was given really does "stand up" to it's name.

She was so animated and we couldn't help but laugh at her.

Let the Planning Begin

That's right....We are nearing both Christmas and Arabella's first birthday. Believe it or not, I'm not really sad about it either. Perhaps it's the hormones, but I'm kind of looking forward to it. I've started planning her birthday (with the help of my December Mamas) and have all of her decorations purchased. We also started buying her gifts back in August. Just little things here and there. Now I have to lay them out and decide which are for Christmas and which are for her Birthday. But today I purchased her first Hallmark Keepsake Ornament. This is a tradition we decided to start when I was pregnant. I was hoping to buy her first one last year, but she didn't make an appearance, so it's a good thing I waited!

On the note of presents, I've been asked by several family members "what do we get for her?" Well...I am going to show you my wish list. And by "my" wish list, these are toys that we've put in Bella's hands and seen wonderful reactions to. This is by no means a list of the things she needs, because frankly we don't have a lot of room in the house and with adding a new baby and all the things that come with babies, we are just barely able to fit into our house. I also like a lot of these toys for their educational value and/or I just think they are plain cute. She has several hand-me down toys from Brooklyn that she's enjoyed until now, but it's time for an upgrade to big-girl toys. She can also use 24+ month shirts or onesies. She's started to bulge out of the 18 month clothes we have and we are starting to run low on hand-me downs in the larger sizes. But if you can find the 18 month jeans with the adjustable waists, that would be awesome! Oh and I'll also mention, if anyone sees any of these at local thrift shops, by all means, let me know. We are no strangers to hand-me downs. If it weren't for the kindness of others she may have very well gone naked this past year.

Parents Counting Pal Soft Blocks

Leap Frog Spin and Sing Alpha Zoo

Melissa & Doug Deluxe 50-piece Wooden ABC/123 Blocks Set

Melissa & Doug 100-piece Wood Block Set

Fisher Price Roll-a-Rounds: Listen Up Rounds, Touch 'N Tickle Rounds, Look-a-Rounds, Zippin' Zoo Rounds, Ride-a-Rounds

Fisher Price Snail Pail Blocks

Munchkin Mozart Magic Cube

Fisher Price See 'N Say

Sassy - Let's Pretend Laptop ** she LOVES to bang on our laptop and I think she'll be in hog heaven with the mirror on this toy. She loves talking to the baby in the mirror.

I'm sure I could go on but....these are the ones that are "most wanted." I know she'll be happy no matter what she gets. I mean what kid has ever actually played with the toy at Christmas or on their Birthday? I could probably just wrap a box and she'd be just peachy with that.

After getting all of her birthday decorations rounded up it's time to finalize her birthday invites. I have several options I've made now I have to figure out which one to go with. Sigh.

26 Weeks and Counting

This past Friday I made it to 26 weeks... This just means I'm another week closer to February. My heartburn is still getting me every now and again, but if I lay off the tomato I seem to be just fine. It' s when I start eating pizza and anything with red sauce in the recipe I end up with all sorts of wicked heartburn. I go back on the 18th for my lovely glucose test and regular check up. Yay me! So I suppose there's not much new on the baby front.

And as you can see I'm very terrible about making sure we get our belly pictures this time around. With Arabella is was like clock work, every Friday night. Now, I just pray I can get a shower and some sleep on Friday night. So I'll try to do better in the future at making sure we have plenty of belly shots of our lil man.

Belly Pic Timeline:

18 weeks

My First Oreo

Since Papa started her off wrong with the sucker it was only fair that Mommy give her a treat, right? Well, I guess I can give partial credit to my Mommy for putting mini Oreo's in Bella's Halloween pail. So, after dinner last night she received a special reward for eating like a big girl.

Mmmm, these are good.

You know you can't eat Oreo's without putting your fingers in your mouth, right?

The face of a little girl who shoved an entire cookie in her mouth, priceless.

Fun at Aunt Erika's

We don't make it up to Aunt Erika's all that often. So when we do, Mommy likes to take a ton of pictures. While we were out on Sunday we ventured her way. In case I don't get around to taking her ten-month pictures, I guess these could serve as her monthly-birthday pictures.

Aunt Erika got a new puppy, Oliver, who is overly happy to see people. He had to go outside and Bella just couldn't quite figure him out.

She made her way to the door to visit him. Poor Oliver.

Happy Girl.

This was the only picture I took where she was some what looking at me. FAIL.

I love this one. She was playing peek-a-boo with Aunt Erika under the coffee table.

Ten Months Already?

Sniff, sniff, sniff...Mommy is very sad. In less than two months my little girl will enter into the world of toddlers. How can it be that ten months has passed since I gave birth to this tiny little creature? How is it that my little girl is already the size of a toddler? I don't know what to think besides sadness. Then I start fretting on how to celebrate her birthday. I mean, after all she was born on New Year's Eve. How do you deal? My dad suggested celebrating in mid January. Hmmmm....NO! I'm not going to let that much time pass, just because it happens to fall on a holiday. I'm half tempted to "celebrate" her birthday at Christmas when the whole family is together. After all, it's the pictures I'm after. I want all of her family there and I don't really care about the gifts. Seriously, we have no where to put them. So I'm open for suggestions and theme ideas....

Moving on, we did her non-official measurements tonight. She turned ten-months-old on Halloween, but it was a busy weekend.

She barely gained any weight since her doctor's appointment, which was October 12th. She's now up to 26 pounds, 2 ounces. As you can see she's still off the chart, but it wasn't as big of a leap as she had been doing in the past. It's very obvious to Adam and I that she's starting to "thin" out. She's beginning to lose part of her baby gut and looking a lot taller in doing so.

Height wise, she may be looking taller, but according to the tape, she didn't grow any. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing? Either way she's still a very healthy little girl.

She has began to refuse to sign back to us. Sigh, she was doing so well with it and then poof, she rarely tells us what she wants. She's moved into throwing fits and I am not liking it one bit. We still proceed with signing to her and hope that she'll start signing back again.

She's added some new consonants, such as r and y. It's funny to hear her baby babble. Courtesy of Daddy she has taken to "flying" around the house. Unfortunately for pregnant Mommy this poses a problem when I try carrying her around. She immediately wants to lay out in her flying position, arms straight out, and it's just too hard for Mommy to carry her. I most certainly am not about to entertain her new habit either.

We've also began weaning her off of baby purees. She's eating more and more table food with Mommy and Daddy which she truly enjoys. It's more apparent every time we try to sneak her baby food. She's flat out refusing some of it, so we get creative and mix table food with her baby food in order to get it used up. She recently discovered the awesomeness that it green beans in their natural state. I suppose this is going to help Mommy lose weight after baby boy is here. After all, she'll be off of baby food and I don't want her eating the greasy foods I did as a kid. So this will be a good thing for us.

She's just an amazing little girl. And WAY TO SMART for her age. She watches us intently when we get into the baby proofed cabinets. She's trying to figure out how we unlock them. She's now begun studying the locks up close. She knows there's a thumb release on the bottom and she'll flip the lock up to study it and see if she can't get it open. She's also figured out that you have to put weight on the gate to the living room to open it. Her problem is that she's too little to do it. That doesn't stop her from trying though.

We have a smart, healthy, and gorgeous little girl. What more could a Mommy and Daddy ask for?

My First Sucker & the "Sucker" who gave it to me

As previously noted, on Halloween Eve we ventured to my parent's house. After Bella Trick or Treated Papa, he was ever so generous in offering her her very first sucker. Fabulous. I swore she wouldn't get any intentional sugar until she was a year-old. Papa did what Papa's do best and gave it to her anyway. Here's a picture story of what happened....

Immediately after her first lick, she glared up to Papa as though he was radiating with awesomeness for giving her such a wonderfully sweet treat. She's also pondering where this thing of beauty came from and why she hadn't had her hands (and tongue) on one before.

After a short period of pondering, she turned to Mommy. Her face begs the question, "Mommy, why haven't you given me these before?" Sigh, because my child, you are too young to be exposed to such "garbage" although your Father and I eat junk like that all the time. We were hoping to spare you from getting a sweet tooth too soon in life. Alas, thanks to your Papa, we have failed you.

Then the culprit and newly found Sweet Tooth Kid pose for a photo together. Later on in life when she asks me why she cannot refuse sweets I will be able to pull out this photograph. I will explain to her how I begged her Papa not give her candy while she's so young and how he refused and did it anyway. She will be able to blame him for her candy addiction and I have the proof right here.

After a while we decided, enough was enough. Although she began to glare at Papa. She knew why he was reaching out his hand. She knew he was going to take the sticky sweetness from her grasp. She just glared and hung on to that stick for dear life.

And in the end...Papa won. She's still refusing to give it up, but after having cherry flavored drool dripped all over his shirt and jeans, he figured it was time to take the sucker away. After all she had cherry flavored drool running down the stick, her arms, and her face. He also knew that should any of that red, cherry flavored drool make it to Grandma's light blue carpet, he would be the one forced to get the carpet cleaner out and fix his mistake. Smart move Papa, smart move.

Happy Halloween *Lots O' Pictures*

For Halloween we had three costumes, two hand-me-downs and one that we won in a giveaway. So on Halloween Eve we dressed her up to go out and do some shopping and then we paraded her around for my parents. They had plans for Halloween and I didn't want them to miss her first one, so we drove to their house. I tried to get good pictures of her, but when in costume she does not cooperate. So you'll have to settle for a hand full of the bazillion pictures I took.

She's a sunflower but Daddy called her a weed. She's growing like a weed, so it was more appropriate. Here she was when she first saw herself in costume in the mirror.

Not cooperating and she wouldn't stand for Mommy.

Trick or Treating at Grandma and Papa's.

Adam captured this one.

Then on Halloween, Grandmama trick or treated us. Bella had just woke from a nap, so she wasn't too cheery faced for these pictures. This is the costume we won in a giveaway.

She was trying to put her fingers in Grandmama's mouth, like she tries with us, but Grandmama had a cure to stop it...

I believe she was actually talking to us in this picture...

And last, but not least, kissing her puppy pail.

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Baby Boy Update

Well, I haven't exactly been very good about blogging here lately. So here we go...

Baby boy has been kicking like crazy. Over the weekend he has began kicking hard enough to knock the wind out of me and for me to be able to see him on the outside. I still can't wait for him to be consistent enough for Adam & Bella to feel him.

Bella is "loving" her baby brother already. She finds every opportunity to kick me in the stomach, punch me in the chest and smack the tummy while on the changing table. On a lighter note, she does love kissing the belly. I find it very weird for me, I guess I never thought she'd be able to show affection to her sibling at this young of an age. But again, for all I know she's just trying to eat my shirt. Either way it is utterly adorable.

My heartburn is beginning to get the better of me. With Bella is was constant from the beginning of pregnancy. With baby boy, it's late in the evening or when I'm trying to sleep. TUMS seems to keep the heartburn at bay, so it's good that I don't have to take a prescription medicine for it.

In other baby news, last week Adam won our bedding set for baby boy's room. We had three options we had narrowed it down to. Once he saw the price of a 4 piece Turtle set, he changed his tune. It was very adorable, but over-priced. Then, when he saw that we could get the 9 piece bedding set below for $50.00, he jumped on it at the last second of the eBay auction. It should be arriving here this week. I cannot wait to see it in person.

Funny thing is it's called Bella Blue. It's a turquoise and chocolate brown color. Now, we polled some of our friends and several thought it is "girly." I have to disagree. The Bella Pink set is girly. The pattern is damask. It's a neutral pattern and non-themed, which I find a perfect fit. I didn't want to go with something themed, because everyone else does it. Besides, it's Mommy and Daddy who have to look at the bedding. Seriously, like the baby is really going to care what the nursery looks like, right? We also figure that by the time he's old enough to have an opinion we'll be ready to upgrade his room to a "big boy" room and he'll get to help decide how we decorate it then. Until then, Mommy will remain happy with her choice.

Close up of the print:

They have this matching blanky I'd love to get for him:

Then begs the question of baby furniture. How much, when, and what. Well, problem solved. Baby boy has a very generous family member who is gifting him his bedroom set. Without this person, I seriously don't know what we would do. I'm not naming the person because that's what was asked of us. All I can say is I'm in tears as I type because of this person's generosity. *Wiping tears*

Yesterday afternoon, we took a family trip (Adam, Bella and Me) to check out baby furniture. We knew where we would like to get it from because it was the same place that Bella's furniture came from. After a short twenty minutes, Adam and I had narrowed it down to three sets. Looking at them side by side, the choice was easy. When we got Bella's set we were adamant that it had to be light colored wood. This time around, we opted for a pretty cherry finish. So, here's baby boy's soon-to-be crib. We ordered from the same manufacturer for a couple of reasons.

1. Their products are "Made in the U.S.A." That is important to Adam.
2. Their products are approved by JPMA. They are tested and proven safe.
3. Their nursery furniture grow with the children. The crib will convert to a toddler bed (which we'll skip) and then to a full size bed (which we'll go to after the crib phase).
4. Their furniture has proven to last a lifetime and is just plain gorgeous.

So with all of that in mind, we will be ever-so-grateful to the donor of this furniture. I'm excited to see it when it arrives. Unfortunately this will be the beginning of the destruction of our "home office." We are going to have to find a place for all of our stuff as we prepare the baby's room. Joy, joy, joy...Les than 15 weeks to go!